Welcome to "Turning Point" a Dryden Experiment Story from Dryden Co-Author John Berg. For more information on The Dryden Experiment visit the other stories below or the background information listed at right below.

Stories in the Dryden Sphere

Thursday, January 24, 2013

I bolted down the stairwell to the
sub-basement. Fortunately I’d only been
on the second floor. Everyone on both
teams – except the Alpha’s – was at that moment rocketing to my position. I didn’t know where the other Close Security
team had been, but I was kissing my luck over the fact that they hadn’t been in
the hall. Which meant they were
Bernerd’s people. If Sashe had been in
charge of both teams, all four of them would’ve been closing in on me instead
of two hanging back to provide rear security.
Bernerd’s always been more of a “layers” guy than Sashe. Of course if Bernerd had been in charge they
probably would’ve used a tranq grenade in the hotel room and then shot me while
I was out.

I had no illusions as to whether or not the door
would be locked. Once they’d seen my
pissy little show on the vid – and there was no way that Sashe and Bernerd
weren’t hooked into the hotel’s vid link – they’d ratchet up the fuckery.

I’d been right about how the first steps would
go. Sashe and her people were good, but
they weren’t the best and they were used to going after Demos. The company hadn’t terminated a Security
contract in over a decade. No one in
any of the current ops teams had been around for longer than eight.

Because of that, none of them were cranked enough to
deal with me. None of them had ever had
to deal with a trained target with nothing to lose. That ended with my little show.
They now had some idea of what they were dealing with. Hell, at that point they had a better idea
of it than I did. I was making it up as
I went along.

I jumped the last few stairs and ran for the
sub-basement. I went ahead and checked
the door, because you never know. Sure
enough, the magnetic seal was engaged.
I let out a snarling grunt as I pulled the bag around in front of me and
opened it up. After a few seconds of
digging I pulled out the splice-card and turned back to the door.

The card’s jack protruded from the narrow gray
rectangle at the corner of the narrow end.
I plugged it into the door-scanner’s maintenance port and let it do its
techy magic. We called them “cards”
because they weren’t much bigger than playing cards. Plug the card in and it scrambles the lock open. I didn’t comprehend the tech behind it and
didn’t care. Security teams used the
cards all the time. Mine was a
free-lance model out of the Diggs and it had cost a full week’s pay. But it was worth every cred. I was confident it would work because I’d
tested it. I’m not completely stupid.

But popping the door was where the resemblance
between the official cards and my independently contracted toy ended. The official cards erased the fact that the
door had been opened from the lock’s internal memory. Mine couldn’t do that. My
card would keep alarms from going off, but that was about it.

After two heart-constricting seconds the door popped
and I pulled the card free, shouldering my way past the door as I did. Spinning on my heel, I slammed the door shut
and re-engaged the lock. Then I pointed
my new pistol at the lock assembly and shot the hell out of it, emptying the
magazine. Hopefully it would cause a
short somewhere and prevent the door from being opened. For a while at least. I slid the card into one of the bag’s
zippered pockets and secured it. I
wasn’t too worried about the card getting broken. Its case may have been made out of plastic, but it was ballistic
grade. On top of that, every one of the
bag’s many pockets was padded. The card
was as safe as I could make it.

The next step was to pull out my comp-shades and to
get them on and working. They were
another free-lance widget that had been worth their cost, which had been less
than the card’s. The frames were some
sort of bitchin’ alloy and hollow.
Inside were crammed all sorts of cool electronics I’d never know the
names of. Those electronics turned the
shades into a mini-comp and among other things gave the benefit of light-amp
and anti-glare. I turned my shades on
and took a look around the room.

The room thankfully offered no surprises. There were a couple of work stations and a
few racks of tools. Near the work stations
were the frames of cleaning and maintenance bots. None of that interested me.
What I was looking for was on the far wall and the floor beside it. The floor held a hatch leading down into the
maintenance tunnels. That hatch was the
reason I had run for the sub-basement in the first place, I’d half-remembered
that the hotel had access to the tunnels.
The wall held the other thing I needed – a medical kit.

I snatched the med-kit from the wall, sat in a chair
by a work station and set the med-kit on the station’s work table. Opening the kit assured me that it had the
immediate necessities – gauze, disinfectant, antibiotic cream and a stitch
gun. Then I pulled out one of my pretty
new knives and started cutting into the skin on my left forearm.

Blood welled up and spilled over as I pulled the tip
of the blade through the top bit of flesh.
I started the incision six centimeters above my wrist and cut for two
before giving myself another just like it.
They made a “L” in my skin, right above my chip.

Everyone
on Roach has a chip in them. They’re
just under the skin on the fore-arm.
They aren’t implanted any deeper because they need to be replaced
sometimes. But that’s something you got
to the docs for. Removing the chip on
your own is against corporate law.

The
chip keeps track of you. It’s stated
purpose is medical. You get sick, you
go to the doc’s. The doc scans your
chip and can tell exactly what’s wrong with you. But the chip also lets Security keep tabs on you, a little beacon
telling them exactly where you are.
It’s how Sashe and Bernerd knew I was actually in my hotel room instead
of getting drunk at a bar. Oh, and if
you remove the chip it let’s out an inaudible scream to the cops filling them
in on your new development.

If
I didn’t get rid of my chip, the hatch in the floor wouldn’t do me much good.

Gritting
my teeth, I probed into my self-inflicted wound with the point of the knife
until I found the chip. Hooking it with
the knife’s point, I flicked the chip out of my arm and onto the table. Then I smashed the damn thing into as many
little pieces as I could. Then it was
time to set the knife down on and get to work on my new incisions.

Disinfectant
got sprayed on, around and into the wound.
Then the antibiotics got put through the same drill. After that I grabbed the stitch gun and
plugged my little “L” wound with four pulls of the trigger. Last was the gauze, to keep crap out of my
hide. After putting everything back
into the kit and stashing it in my bag, I retrieved my knife and turned to the
hatch in the floor.

The tunnels were my means to getting the next thing
I needed – a way of getting to a part of the dome that security didn’t have
monitored all the way to hell and back.
What I’d said earlier about “every stairwell and hallway under the dome”
being bugged? That was an
exaggeration. I needed to get to the
Diggs and I needed to do it unseen.
That’s where the tunnels came in.

Ironically, the entirety of my time as a Contract
Specialist had been spent bitching about how small the Security Division’s
budget was. My argument was logical –
with a better budget, we’d have better equipment and the job would be that much
more survivable. I’d also interpreted
the Company’s stinginess as a lack of regard for our safety and hadn’t always
been quiet about it. Now the Company’s
unwillingness to spend credits on anything that didn’t magically multiply them
was going to work in my favor.

The maintenance tunnels were unmonitored.

You see, there are miles of tunnels beneath
and between the domes and Syrch didn’t see the need to spend money on watching
empty tunnels. Especially miles and
miles of empty tunnels. And that would
be my ticket to the Diggs. As long as I
could avoid the bots and crews, I could get to a place where I could hide and
plot. At least for a little while.

I ran across the room and popped the unlocked hatch
open. I took a quick inventory of my
gear, making sure everything was secure before starting down the ladder and
pulling the hatch shut behind me. The
moment the hatch was settled I threw the lock-bar and jumped to the tunnel
floor.

A quick glance assured me that I was alone. I raised my right index finger to the
comp-shades and toggled the compass. A
notched green line appeared across the top of the left lens, scrolling as I
turned my head left and then right.
When I was facing a cardinal direction, an indicator would pop up
beneath the appropriate notch in the little green line, telling me which
direction I was facing. Once I had
myself pointed in the right direction I started jogging.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Thumper preceded me out into the hall as I swept her
to the left, fully expecting what I was half-hoping to not find. And there they were, Sashe’s Close Security,
pistols aimed and barking. I didn’t
have to think about firing Thumper. By
that point in life it was automatic.
Too bad there were slugs hammering me in the chest and ribs as I pulled
the trigger.

My shot went wild, burying itself somewhere in the
wall or ceiling as I was staggered back by the impacts against my armored
jacket. Oh yeah, didn’t I mention
that? The heavy jacket and pants I’d
changed into while talking to Mhik and Ahni were armored. That’s why they were in the bag with the
spare clips for Thumper, comp-shades, my illegal splice card and four
concussion grenades. And you have no
idea how glad I was at that moment that I’d decided to bring the damn bag with
me. I was still staggering as I heard
their pistols bark again.

I turned and ran for all I was I was worth.

The pistols barked a few more times as I tore ass
down the carpeted hallway, adrenaline and a happy snarl singing in my
veins. Like I said, I’d only been half
hoping not to see them there. The other
half of me had been swimming in my new hate-pool and very much looking forward
to it.

It only took me a few seconds to get to where I was
furiously sprinting – the door leading into the stairwell. I heard one of them yell “Shit!” as I
barreled through the door. I didn’t
slow down for the stairs and made it to the next floor before hearing them
thunder into the stairwell.

“Which way,” one of them started before I let them
know where I was.

“Fuck!” I yelled before tearing the door to my right
open and jumping into the hall. I kept
the door open a sliver as I holstered Thumper.
I listened to Sashe’s team’s progress and reached into the bag. I pulled out a grenade, popped the safety
and started the short-count. They’d be
close enough when it was time.

Four, three, two, I counted as my pursuers
pounded down the stairs, and, I yanked the door open and tossed the
primed grenade towards them in a short arc.
Then I threw myself back around the corner and sprinted the hell away
from that door. I wasn’t worried about
catching much of the blast myself. The
comparatively vast open space of the stairwell would allow the concussive force
to dissipate too quickly to do any real damage to anyone on the other side of a
wall. But you do not fuck about when
it comes to explosives. People who do
that tend to not have the full inventory of parts for long. So I moved.

When I heard the crump of the grenade going
off I looped back to the stairwell. I
didn’t have to worry about getting the door open as the grenade had taken it
off the hinges. Didn’t disperse as
much as I thought it would, I mused as I stepped over to the bodies of my
former pursuers. Shrugging, I bent down
and started stripping them of their gear.
I didn’t bother going through their pockets, just stripped them of their
equipment belts and the serious gear.
The pistols I found a few feet away.
One went into the bag.

I zipped up the bag and slung it over my shoulder
and across my back. Then I methodically
dropped the clip from the pistol I had kept in my hand, weight-checking it for
ammo. The pistol’s ex-owner had changed
mags before tearing down the stairs.
Good. I nodded, slapped the clip
back in and checked the chamber. I
chuckled as I jacked the slide, seating a round in the chamber.

Time to let ‘em all know just what I think of
this shit. I turned to glare up into the corners where
the walls and ceiling met. That was
where the cameras were. Not where they
would be, but where they were. Every
stairwell and hallway under the dome was plugged for sight and sound. You learn that sort of thing in my line of
work.

I glared at the cameras. “Not much of a psych retrieval, fuckers. Your bitches were packing slugs, not
tranqs.” Then I turned to the still
forms on the floor and put two of those slugs into each of their already
bleeding skulls.

Thursday, January 3, 2013

I was in that odd world of half‑sleep.
Some part of you knows that you're not awake, but you keep responding to
your dream as if it were real. In my
dream, someone was calling my name. In
the waking world I was used to people calling my name all the time. Whispers over the com during a hit, sudden
shouts full of rage in the middle of fire-fights and sometimes Marce would cry
it out during a bout of passion.

This voice was different. It
was soft and distant with an edge like broken glass. Somehow loving and hostile at the same time. Dangerous.
In the logic of dreams, some part of me recognized it and remembered
being able to ignore it when awake. But
here in the world of dreams and half‑memory I had to answer.

Gritting my teeth, I answered.
There was silence for a second, then I was called again. This time there were either a lot of voices
or a skittering sound, I wasn't sure which.
That's the way it is with dreams sometimes. I realized at that point that the sound/voice wanted me to turn
around. I didn't want to,
but it insisted. Knowing there was no
real choice, I turned.

I was surrounded by a dark gray blur, and as I finished turning I could
make out a yellow tinge to it.
Suddenly, I was looking into a bright blue‑white sun shining over yellow
hills. There was a smell like burnt
coffee. A sense of something important
began to rise up in me when I heard a com-deck buzz.

I jumped and moaned in my sleep.
The com buzzed again and I rolled towards it. I was rewarded with a flash of pain in my skull and a nearly
overpowering urge to use the latrine.
Hangover. Big one.

The com deck buzzed yet again, bringing another flash in my head. When I hit the answer button all the com
gave me was a mess of static on the screen and an extremely irritating hiss on
the speaker. I reached to shut the
damned thing off.

Stupid data terminal,
I thought. Must’ve told someone this
was a mainframe.

Just before I punched the disconnect button, I paused. Something in my dark and confused memory was
trying to get my attention. I prepared
to take a deep breath and it hit me.
There was a security override that Mhik had taught us all a long time
ago. It disguised a com call as a bank
transaction. I dredged my mind for the
right code and punched it in. As the
white lines faded and the static vanished, Ahni's worried face appeared on the
screen.

“Alec, my friend,” She
sighed. “You have gotten yourself into
a world of shit.” She looked to her
left. “We've got him.”

Mhik stepped into view. He
looked tired but relieved. “You know,
Alec, its a damned good thing that we got to you before they did.”

I made a sound. It was meant to
be a word, but the ethanol poisoning had convinced my tongue that it was
dead. I cleared my throat and spat on
the rug. Shaking my head, I tried
again. “Who?” I finally managed. “What
time is it?”

Ahni bored into me with her bright green eyes. “You have been the subject of an involuntary
contract revision.”

Mhik chuckled. “No, no. They're not terminating your contract,
they're revising it. It seems
that Security Division no longer deems you worthy of the position of Contract
Specialist. You have officially been
declared mentally unstable.” He
grinned. “Like that's something everyone
on our team didn't already know.”
Mhik seemed a little too amused at the news he and Ahni were giving
me. I however, was not amused at
all. Free wheeling psychotics are
hunted more desperately than Demos.
Only instead of quick, clean deaths they were given lifetimes spent in
the hell of the psych wards.

I knew exactly how very fucked I was.

“Shit! How long do I
have?” I started gathering the few
things I had brought with me.
Unfortunately, I had passed out in my clothes. I was kicking my boots off when Mhik responded.

“I found out about an hour ago.
I hacked the system to find out what was going on, and did some
checking. They were gearing up right
before we called you, so between getting there and setting up you've got about
twenty minutes before they jump up your ass.”

I glanced at the clock and saw that I had only slept for three
hours. Then I glared at the com
screen. My ball of hate jumped about
eighteen degrees and started hopping.
“So why the hell are they doing this to me, Mhik? Is it 'cause of the Su‑Fin?” I had my pants
off and balled up in one hand. I shoved
them into the bag I’d grabbed just before leaving the con-apt and pulled out a
pair of heavier black pants. I was
shoving myself into them as I turned back to Mhik. “They decide to psyche me just ‘cause I pumped some rounds into a
fuckin’ dead guy? What the hell is
this?” My last question came out as
little more than a snarl.

Mhik snorted and turned away from the screen. Ahni gave him a little glare and answered my question.

“No, Alec. According to the
records it goes back a lot further that that.
Mhik downloaded your files while he was checking on the sitch. Even the secure files. There's a lot of shit in here, Alec. Stuff that goes all the way back to when you
were a kid.”

I was in my boots and shrugging into a zip-up jacket that matched the
pants in color and weight when I looked up at the screen. “Like what?”

Ahni’s eyes bored into me.
“Like the fact that at the age of 9 you burned through 10 milligrams of
Glycon in less than two hours.”

“I what?” I froze for a second
before reaching for my bag of toys.
Glycon was a heavy-duty sedative.
Operatives use it to tranq helpful neighbors who get in the way during a
hit. Six milligrams of Glycon would
normally put an adult to sleep for three hours.

“Yeah,” Mhik said, coming back on-screen. “It was while they were head-shrinking you after your mom’s
death. The file says you got violent
with a counselor. Jumped over his desk
and started biting his face. When the
nurses charged in they tranqued you. As
they thought you were going under one of the nurses mentioned your mother.” He gave Ahni a grim look. “She lost her ear in the struggle.” Mhik looked back to me with the most serious
expression I had ever seen him wear.
“According to the files, you had several incidents like this, Alec. All of them disproportionately violent. When you were twelve, Security tried to have
you committed.”

I froze in shock. “What?”

“A gentleman named Conrad Arthur intervened on your behalf. He had you assigned to Security Division
instead.” At this point, Mhik started
to look amused again. “Guess he figured
you were a natural.”

I gave Mhik a glare of my own.
“I don’t recognize the name and I sure as hell don’t remember going
psycho on any nurses as a kid. Who’s
this Conrad guy?” God, my head hurt.

Mhik and Ahni glanced at each other.
Mhik shrugged his shoulders and Ahni spoke up. “We don’t know who he is Alec.
We couldn’t find anything that pinned down his title or division. Just that he kept you out of the psych
wards.”

“Alec!” Mhik’s “command voice”
snapped me back and I continued to gear up.
“The point of all this is that Mr. Arthur covered your ass at a critical
time.” He paused. “And that he isn’t now.”

None of it made sense. Yeah,
I’d gotten into trouble as a kid, but nothing serious. Nothing like what the files were telling
Mhik and Ahni. And I’d never heard of
any Arthur Conrad. “So what burned me?”

“This.” Mhik pulled out his
mini-comp and pushed a button. The
mini-comp played back several seconds of the tirade I had launched at the
computer in the Sub-Tram terminal.
“Security Division pulled your contract before anyone had a chance to
find out.”

I finished getting my gear together and did a quick pre-combat
inspection. While I made sure that I
had everything and that everything was in its place, I struggled to sort things
out. “Those files aren’t right. Somebody had to have rigged them. Mhik, I still don’t-”

“Look,” Ahni said, interrupting me, "this is all fascinating but you need to get the fuck out of there. Now.”

“Ahni, I can handle it. They’ll
start off with a routine retrieval op.
I can deal.”

Ahni’s eyes blazed. “Alec, you
don’t seem to get it. You’ve been
classified as a Case 9 Hazard. They’ve
invoked the Sierra Protocol, sent Sashe’s and Bernerd’s teams after
you. Do you really think you can take
them all?”

I whistled through my teeth.
There are only ten Hazard levels. Lethal force is authorized for
anything over Case 7, and Sashe’s team was good. Almost as good as us. Shit. Maybe I wasn’t going to get the option of a
rubber room after all.

“Thanks, guys.” Something
clicked in my head and I felt a sudden surge of guilt. “Ahni, will you tell Marce that I had to
go?” There was a sick moment of vertigo
as I set my mind on the current problem.
I stared into Ahni’s deep green eyes.
“Will you tell her that I’m sorry?”
She nodded.

“I’ll tell her.” She dropped
her gaze to the floor. “Hey,
Alec.” She looked back up and gave me a
feral grin. “Kill one for me.”

My smile was hard. “I’ll kill
‘em all and we’ll have a party.” Then I
broke the com connection and was alone in the dark.

Fortunately I knew a lot about how level 9 teams worked. Up until then I’d been a member of one. They’d hit balcony first, tossing a tranq or
concussion grenade into the room. After
that the shooter would come in and mop up.
If this was a psych retrieval they’d use tranq gas. I cursed at the thought, regretting that I’d
never had the chance to get my hands on a protective mask. Gas masks aren’t for sale to employees and
hellishly expensive in the Diggs.

But in spite of what Ahni had told me, I suspected that Sashe and Bernerd were
going to be tempted to skip the whole “capture” bit. They wouldn’t be thrilled with the idea of using non-lethal
ordinance with a Case 9 hazard. I sure
as hell wouldn’t be.

At that moment my internal clock was off by a factor of seven and I desperately
needed to not be in a small room. I
glanced at my watch. Damn! When had Mhik and Ahni’s call come in? How long had we actually talked? I couldn’t remember. Suddenly my gut contracted and my icy rock
was back. I was used to being the hunter,
not the hunted. Then something inside
of me screamed a warning and I dove for the latrine.

I had barely cleared the latrine doorway when I heard the window
shatter. So much for Ahni’s twenty-minute deadline. Damnit all, why had I gotten a window room? Marce was right, I had been acting
weird lately. I slammed the latrine
door shut and bunched myself against the wall, covering my ears and clamping my
eyes shut. Right on cue the grenade
went off, knocking the latrine door off its hinges and onto the floor beside
me. It hurt like hell, but I didn’t
have time to pay attention to pain.

I had two things going for me, both courtesy of the concussion
grenade. First, the sleeping room was
filled with a debris cloud. That would
keep the sniper blind for a good minute.
Second, the shooter on the balcony was going to be just as deaf as I
was. That still had the numbers coming
up short and I needed to cheat.
Contract Termination teams were used to taking out Demos filled with
passion and lacking in brains. As far
as Sashe’s team was concerned the knowledge I had would be as good as loaded
dice.

I barged out of the latrine and ran across the shattered sleeping
room. I came on to the balcony trailing
streamers of dust-cloud just as the shooter was climbing in. My momentum fueled the kick I planted in the
shooter’s chest. His jumper absorbed
most of the impact, but it was enough to spin him in a tight circle and back
out over the sidewalk.

Dumbass, I thought as he tumbled through the initial arc of his descent, should’ve
kept the grippers on and stayed put.
Shot me from over the balcony edge.

Cursing, I drew Thumper and bolted away from the crack of bullets that
were now gnawing their way across the balcony toward me. Sashe’s Delta was obviously on top of
things, having already swapped from the sonic to the rifle it was attached
to. They were taking my Case 9 status
seriously.

Half blind and choking on plaster dust I stumbled through the sleeping
room and out the suite’s door, grabbing my bag on the way out. It was time to see if Sashe’s Close Security
was as good as her sniper.

About Me

Introduction

After years of writing fiction and non-fiction for magazines like Appleseeds, Alienskin, Tales of the Talisman; self publishing books like, Flash Master, Summer of the Masters or Seasons of Fire; and contributing to roleplaying games like, Chosen, Joel decided he wanted it all; a galaxy spanning story, told as conventional fiction, a web based video, and a kick ass role-playing game.

Fortunatly, Joel's long time partner in the writing business, John Berg (insert John's Bio Stuff) had been thinking along the same lines, and so, The Dryden Experiment was born over a kitchen table littered with scrap paper, laptops and Mountain Dew Cans.

Our goal is to build an open sourced (meaning many writers) Universe supporting multiple single and long arc stories. We want to do it online, as print, with a role-playing game, and eventually, as an online television show.

We even have a couple of kinky wrinkles we want to try;

1. We want fan fiction and fan art to be a part of the project from the start. Because of rule #2, it's all got to be for the love for now but check back soon to learn how to add your story or art to this universe.

2. All of the core components; text, video, and the core gaming rules have got to be available free of charge. The only revenue streams we're allowing ourselves are in-line ads, donations, and (maybe later) secondary products like tee-shirts or bound versions of the text.

The blog that you're on now is the main story arc; The Story of Seli Dryden and the crew of the IDF Moth. Soon this blog with also contain pages covering Seli's Universe, there will also soon be links to a "real world" blog where you can check in and see how the Dryden Experiment is progressing in our world, and also blogs of fan fiction and art.

If you like the idea and want to get involved before we get the rest of the goodies laid out, contact us at drydenexperiment@yahoo.com

If you like the idea and would like to contribute financially, please use the donate button below.